In a little-known regulation established in 2017, refineries that use hydrofluoric acid (HF), an exceptionally dangerous chemical that can cause mass casualties in a few minutes, “are required to conduct a Hierarchy of Hazard Control Analysis (HCA) of its units on a repeating 5-year cycle. A Hazard Control Analysis requires the refinery to enumerate the hazards of each process, and, to assess whether higher order safety measures are feasible” [like using a vastly safer chemical], – a letter from Torrance Refinery-PBF to TRAA, 2018.
The first 5-year cycle ended October 2022 and somebody has been playing “hide the football” ever since. (See this Article from June 2023 for background).
Finally we received a highly-redacted copy of the HCA report. In fact every word of every answer was redacted. This is the sort of stonewalling they (the City of Torrance and the refinery) have done since the beginning! Perhaps they thought FOIA meant “Freedom of Blank Document Act” as absolutely no information was provided. These are pages 1 and 7, but they ALL look the same.
Torrance Refinery Action Alliance 